Pandora's Ink Digital Magazine

Written by Yixuan (Eason) Liu from Shanghai Starriver Bilingual School, Shanghai, China A swarm of angels plunged from the sky with a craving for my blood and a hunger for my hair. Their wings carried white, shining sand from the sea, pelting my raw skin with a silky river of gems. In their hands they held a sapphire mirror– an emperor stared at me from its papery depths, stealing my smile to wear on his empty face. He stretched out his broken hand and took my umbrella, bit

Written By Amy Hou from Concord Academy, MA, USA To the United States, I am an immigrant to America, though the word “immigrant” feels too easy, too administrative, as if crossing an ocean were a form to be stamped rather than a body split into before and after. I arrived carrying another geography under my skin. Another grammar of belonging. Classrooms here orbit around race. Everything bends toward it, returns to it, asks the body to position itself in relation to it. Read.

Written by Vincent Lin from China They often say, no rainbow without rain. Well, the water’s poured all monsoon season — unending, interminable, rainbowless. Water curtains flood, dappled with my despair, friendships too broken to repair, my life tangled like hair. “Sissy!” calls my “friend”, and no one lends a helping hand. Under dazzling neon lights, they’re all fake as my feigned delight. Oh please... tell me what I’ve done wrong, for being born this way — born

Written by Kay Budka-Fox from London, UK hey kid, I'm sorry you're confused I'm sorry your heart was torn up and it was used I really never meant for us to be abused or stuck in a game where we had no choice but to lose I'm sorry your skies could never stay blue, and that your eyes were exposed too early to the truth, but kid, what I know now is that it's possible to get through, the pain never goes away but what grows around it is up to you, so now I'll nurture better th